John Phillips
JP Blown Glass Studio  

5836 Mowat Avenue, Powell River, BC V8A 4C1
604.414.0361    Email     Website

A  R  T  I  S  T      S  T  A  T  E  M  E  N  T

To make a living from one’s creative ability you have to come to terms with what the public will buy.  This happens by trial and error and if one survives on an economic level, it usually means that you have to produce a lot of production work.  The good part is that this develops one’s artistic skills as well as marketing one’s work.  This can leave very little time for doing more creative work, which can lead to some despairing moments. Time passes and when a body of work has been achieved, you realize that the answer is in developing  and learning the reality of  business, increasing  the area of one’s weaker skills and allowing time to have fun creating.

Building in the observer is most important and nature is what I draw from for inspiration.  It has been said:

‘True artists are the antennae of nature
Coming nature casts its artists before it.
The Bohemian is the typical subjective artist, expressing himself’

I feel this is true, although my production work could be called ‘Objective Art’, and produces a state of non-identification.  On closer evaluation it is concerned with inner development.

There is no such thing as an immortal work of art.  There is one art–-the greatest of all, the art of making a complete human being of oneself.  I am at the stage of enjoying the journey; I still have a long way to go.

My present endeavours with the ‘Antiquity Series’ was influenced by the fabulous stained glass windows made by Tiffany, and my newest work, ‘The Ethereal Garden Series’ is the culmination of my interests in gardening, nature, and the spiritual and cosmic realm.